Place to go: LONDON

I went to London about two years ago, in 2005, with my mother, little sister and cousin.

On the 19th of March I departed from the airport of Lisbon at around 10 a.m. We flew with British Airways, which cost us 1500€, more or less (depart and return). Two and a half hours later I was arriving in Heathrow, full of enthusiasm, although I get really bored while flying. I had heard that London was amazing and was ready to test it.

At Heathrow, after retrieving our luggage and a long time trying to understand the ticket selling machines, we took the subway and headed to Gloucester Road, near which was located the apart hotel we had booked our stay in.

After exiting the underground we were impressed right away. We (obviously) got lost. Luckily a gentleman in a bicycle saw immediately that we were lost foreigners and offered to help us. However he himself didn’t know where the Somerset Roland Gardens apart hotel was, but unlike everyone I’ve ever asked for directions in Portugal he actually went looking for the place. After about two minutes he was back and directed us perfectly to where we wanted to go. I was very impressed.

Somerset Roland Gardens is a very nice apart hotel. It has really pleasant accommodations, and we all fitted there very well. It had a wonderful big window in the living room facing a beautiful street with all the houses looking exactly the same, each one very well painted with a great car parked in front of it.

Since we didn’t want to loose time in the apartment (no matter how nice it was) we decided to split the days according to each one’s ambitioned destinations.

So the first day, the day of the arrival, it was my cousin’s day. So we went to the London Eye, to have a global view of the city. We had been told that London was a very cold and grey place, but when we got there, the sun was bigger and hotter than in Portugal!! Since there was no queue we thought that maybe it would be interesting to see the differences between London’s Aquarium, that was about ten meters away, and our Oceanário. It was a very good aquarium, however, ours is better, I dare say. But the real attraction was on the roof top of the aquarium. Several trampolines had been placed there with giant supports of metal, which connected to several really strong elastics that were linked to a belt. It was awesome!! We jumped like crazies! It was like flying!! It was probably the best fun I’ve ever experienced!

When we were “flying”, we noticed that the queue to the Big Eye was becoming humongous, so we had to interrupt the fun and get in the queue. We enjoyed the view very much… the sun set was very helpful, it turned the light more beautiful.

The next day we went to the Tower of London to see the crown jewels. They were rather impressive. We also went to Madam Tussaud’s and posed next to lots of very famous people made of wax.

The day after, it was my day! We went to the amazing Natural History Museum. I made a point to go there. It was the most wonderful museum I had ever been to. I was gobsmacked! I would have stayed there for three days if I could. But I couldn’t… after a brief lunch we went to baker street to see the house of Sherlock Holmes, and afterwards we went to Harrods! We found it too big and too expensive.

On the last day we went to the Tate Modern, to see the art my mother wanted to see. After that we went to the most beautiful theatre I’ve ever been and ever will be to… The Globe!

It is the reproduction of Shakespeare’s original theatre and it is simply brilliant… I was speechless (and that’s hard for me).

Overall, I’m sure you understood that I brought wonderful memories from London. I was there for four short days, and felt like home. The fact that there was a Portuguese person in every place we entered contributed for that feeling. The only problem the entire trip was the food. I must have chosen the worst things to eat because my family ate fairly well. On the day when we went to the museum, we ate there, and I was almost killed by a plate full of Dijon Moustard… I didn’t know it to be that spicy! They should have warnings! I know that the food was my fault… nevertheless, I didn’t enjoy it particularly… I didn’t taste the traditional fish and ships, but the next time I go there (because I’m sure going back) I will taste it… maybe I shouldn’t…


Carolina Bruxelas